Thursday, November 20, 2014

I feel honored to have written the liner notes for singer Michael Dees' forthcoming CD "The Dream I Dreamed" (release details to be announced shortly).Inasmuch as all 14 tracks possess music and lyrics by Michael, I should have written "singer-SONGWRITER Michael Dees." Here is but a taste of the opening track, "In a Moment, featuring, as does the CD throughout, Terry Trotter (piano), Chuck Berghofer (bass) and Steve Schaeffer (drums). And on this track, Doug Webb (tenor sax) & Don Williams (bongos). The tempos, moods and themes of these new numbers vary greatly throughout the album, but the one thing they have in common with "Moment" is their stick-to-itiveness. Hear 'em once and—à la "Rodan"—you probably won't be able to get these "monsters" out of your mind. Here's a clip:

Saturday, November 08, 2014

Current batch of SSJ (Japan) releases includes a fairly "new" issue, i.e. the Japanese version of singer Linda Purl's 2013 U.S. release entitled---on SSJ as well---"Midnight Caravan." With a bonus of Purl singing "Shall We Dance" in Japanese (quite well, I think). A very rewarding CD; it includes a verse to "I Feel a Song Coming On" that I have NEVER heard before, and an Ira Gershwin - Vernon Duke rarity, "Spring Again." The second SSJ is by a singer who's fairlee recherche, Norma Mendoza. It's a reissue of her 1960 "All About Norma" (as opposed to "Ronnie"). Demonstrating once again that ---in general---fairly much everybody USED to be able to sing. In other words, a very commendable effort. Maybe a One Shot Wonder?

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

In my first column for (West Virginia State College) "The Yellow Jacket" I had written something that was clearly an homage, albeit unconscious, to this widely-praised local gadfly. After all, how better, than a la Anderson, to skewer the noxious jingoism of "Up With People." In the phone call I received from Anderson, not only was I complimented on my "Up With People" roasting, he also offered me a job at the Charleston Gazette. This, after my having written exactly one piece of journalism in all of my nineteen years. I accepted his gracious offer on the spot, but I'll probably never know whether it was my "School of Anderson" approach to writing, or else L.T.A's sensing potential writerly talent, based on the slimmest of evidence, that caused him to hire me.

Showing up for work a few days later, in classic newspaper fashion, I was set to work rewriting obituaries. Almost immediately, however, things began to go south when it became apparent that my "Up With People" column was a fluke: I couldn't write my way out of a paper bag. The second week, Anderson called me over to his desk to get to the bottom of things. "For a journalism major, you sure do make a lot of errors," he said. "But I'm not a journalism major." "Oh well, just come to see me every day after we put the paper to bed and I'll teach you everything you need to know about writing for a newspaper in no time." If he was worried about his impulsive act of hiring me, it didn't show.

That afternoon, after the paper was put to bed, the thirty-or-so of us in the city room looked on, grinned and rolled our eyes heavenward as Anderson leapt up on his desk and launched into his regulation, old-fashioned, practical neo-Marxian oratory on the folly and illusion of private property. Thrusting his index finger downward, and in the style of the Bible Belt preachers he otherwise abhorred, he inveighed: "Who or what gives you or anyone else the right to say that you and you alone OWN the land under your very feet. . .?" And so on and so forth. He proceeded to lead the assembled faithful in singing the old Protestant hymn, "Bringing in the Sheaves." He was in earnest, but trying to come off like too much of an unreconstructed Commie via the injection of his strong stock-in-trade-humor. It was a masterful performance. Then, true to his word, he leapt down off his desk, ripped a length of copy paper out of the typewriter, seated himself, and called out my name:

"Young Reed! It's time for your lesson. Beginning with the golden mean of journalism, the inverted triangle. Always start your most important information and then arrange the remainder of your paragraphs in descending order of importance so that the editor always knows to cut from the bottom if the piece needs to be sheared away at for space." With that, he commenced upon a several-months-long daily seminar on the not-so-intricacies of newspaper writing.